#052: 10 Things I Learned From A Year Of Podcasting

What this episode covers

Knowledge isn’t life changing. The application of knowledge is. Todd Stocker 2015 has been a year full of lessons and podcasting played a huge part in new experiences and things I want to continue improving. Session Summary * Feature Presentation: 10 Things I Learned From A Year of Podcasting I can’t believe it’s been almost a year that I have been releasing weekly sessions of The DancePreneuring Studio. It was my goal to stay consistent week after week and I have been able to do that. It hasn’t been the easiest thing because I do pretty much everything myself. I’ve learned so much and I’ve had some insightful conversations with some amazing creatives. So I wanted to quickly share 10 Things I Learned From A Year of Podcasting 1. You don’t have to be perfect before you start. I never thought I would be a podcaster. I was the shy, self conscious girl that was so nervous to speak that I had to rehearse several times as my heart would palpitate and I would get so anxious, just to pick up the phone and order a pizza. When I was in Kindergarten moving to Texas from Korea and learning English, I had to take special speech classes. They weren’t necessarily ESL classes but I had a pretty bad lisp so that had to be worked on. So, it’s better to start somewhere and make improvements along the way than wait for everything to be perfect. 2. Schedule out blocks of time to get what you need to get done. You need to put it in your calendar with times. It cannot just be a random checklist. Give yourself reasonable deadlines. You will feel so accomplished when you complete these items. That goes for pretty much everything for me these days. I continue to build my self confidence by being accountable to me first. 3. Be prepared that things take longer than you anticipate. I ran into several technical snags that I couldn’t figure out so I enlisted help and even that took longer than I would’ve liked. But the important thing is to keep moving forward and things will get done. 4. Get help with the technical stuff. It will save you time. Unless you like to do it and can do it quickly. 5. Create templates as soon as possible. I didn’t do this initially but now I have a simple show notes system that I use in Evernote and then it gets posted on my site as I work on each session. 6. It’s perfectly fine to use a mix of free and paid resources. I didn’t have a big budget to work with when I started my podcast, and even now, my expenses are minimal, until I decide to upgrade my equipment and get different music and intros. So to give you an idea of what was paid and what was free, of course, initially there are some things you will need to invest in but they can be one time investments. The things that I paid for are my custom buy 200 mg tramadol online album art, my microphone, my intro and outro music and segments, the hosting platform for the podcast audio, and my normal hosting for my website. The free resources I use are my recording software called Audacity, Freesound.org for a few of the sound effects, and a quick editing online software called Auphonic. Now are there better resources to use, of course, but my point is that it’s better to start somewhere and improve as you grow. And you don’t even need customized intro and outro music to start, you can simply share your content, record, post and promote. 7. There’s always room for improvement, but don’t get down on yourself and don’t let it stop you.

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